


We'll Go To The Woods No More

by elderbwrry



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 19th Century France, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Vampire, BAMF Nines and Connor, Blood and Violence, Catholicism, Dubious Consent, Eventual Sexual Content, Hypnotism, Internal Conflict, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Vampire Bites, Vampire Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Vampire Hunter Gavin Reed, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Upgraded Connor | RK900, it's vampires, seriously they have no qualms about murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:46:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27217399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elderbwrry/pseuds/elderbwrry
Summary: Gavin is a hunter of unholy beasts. His expertise is werewolves, but when he is summoned to help the Church exterminate a group of vampires in an old French castle, he comes face to face with the famed pair of vampire brothers whose legacy is written into the bloodier chapters of history. Trapped in a castle with the demons and their companions, Gavin finds himself confronting truths about his own past he'd always tried to avoid.
Relationships: Referenced Connor/Gavin, Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 60
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A vampire AU! My first D:BH fic, which I started writing over a year ago and am only posting now. RK900/Nines' name in this is Richard for a more 19th century feel. Not beta read. There's some violence here and later, including one graphic death depiction in this chapter.

“Brethren, please be seated,” the Évêque Geoffrey Fowler announced, and a general scraping of chairs followed from all over the dingy château dining room, the hunters still somewhat prickly around each other even as they sat cramped at the long tables that had been broken out for their visit. The meeting of the DPD had begun. “Thank you for your swift arrival.”

A call had gone out two months ago, summoning various cells to Champagne for a hunt. Gavin had been contently minding his own business, touring the towns on the south-eastern side of the Black Forest and taking care of threats as they arrived, but when he returned to a town he was known to frequent, the innkeeper handed him a letter sealed with the dark crimson wax of the DPD. It was rare for anyone to receive such a summons – least of all him, since he'd tried so hard to distance himself from any of the main groups – and he felt he had little choice but to leave immediately.

As it turned out, only a few hunters had shown up – either that or the DPD was worse off than he had thought – but the members that were present, however, were prestigious enough that Gavin had heard of them and, in some cases, had even hoped to train with them at one time or another. Hank Anderson, for example, was famed for his work and was known to have a thriving cell that moved through parts of Russia and down into Eastern Europe. He even had a young assistant with him. Tina Chen was on a further table flanked by two other female apprentices. It was rare to see one of the non-Catholic-aligned Chinese masters so far west, but it imparted an air of gravity to the situation that Gavin couldn't deny.

He was also noticed in return, to his pleasant surprise; he had trained under Fowler originally, but once he'd left the immediate fold, he didn't expect anyone to know anything about him. On the contrary, apparently news of his efforts in werewolf suppression were well known. “Couldn't say how well you would do against what we're about to face,” Anderson had joked with him in perfect German during dinner, after he had set himself down heavily on Gavin's left and launched into a conversation as if he had known him his whole life.

So, twelve hunters overall. Fowler, DuPont and Marcel, who were the leaders, Hank and his assistant – his son, Cole, as Gavin learned later – and Tina and her two apprentices made up the bulky groups. There was also a Lord Murray from England, Skarsson from Iceland, and Fogel, another German. And Gavin, of course.

“Now that we have prayed and broken bread, let us discuss the business of tomorrow evening's mission.” Fowler was a grave man, but now he spoke more gravely still, as if the growing dusk and cobwebbed hall didn't set the mood well enough already.

Gavin rolled his eyes; the thing about the DPD was that it was officially-unofficially a denomination of the Church, so the leaders were all of the righteous Christian mindset. Indeed, there were holy orders to be taken in initiation. This was one of the reasons Gavin had left for Germany rather than remain in Paris with the rest of the new initiates; he took the orders and left to a place where he would not be expected to uphold them. He worked much better alone, far from the sight of God and man.

“In this quiet town, there have been a series of disappearances. The killers do not discriminate between young and old, male or female. In the past, there have been other such disappearances in other towns of this province, and the range is not so far nor wide that we are unsure as to the source. There is a castle a few miles north from here which we believe to be the abode,” Fowler paused dramatically. A gust of wind from outside emphasised the moment and there was a general shuffling of people in their places. “Of vampires.”

There was another pause as Fowler allowed everyone to absorb the information. Gavin was never sure how much these interludes were appreciated by the other hunters and how many of them also held a disdain for the dramatic and religious practices of the DPD, but for him they just bounced straight off. After all, how many real religious people wanted to get a job associating so closely with demons? Sure, he'd met some die-hard believers, but that wasn't his experience of his profession. Killing things generally required more of a rough edge than most any of the pastoral clergy had, except the DPD leaders, even the angry hellfire types. Gavin, for his part, had _had_ to join the priesthood – he didn't have another choice – and the DPD seemed like a decent way to do so while avoiding actual service as a priest. Hell, he could even frequent brothels without being questioned twice.

“We believe it to be the brothers DuArqué,” Fowler continued, drawing out a tome and opening it heavily out across the table in front of him, causing several hunters to move the light weapons they had left lying in the way. There was a drawing on the faded yellow pages that he pointed to. Gavin didn't care to look at it too closely; he would kill _anything_ undead he came up against inside that castle. “So expect at least two foes tomorrow. However, they have been fabled to have companions; consorts, familiars and all manner of other foul beasts. Be prepared for brutality. Be prepared for depravity. Above all, you must resist the charms they cast against you.

“We plan to enter through the main door. They are unlikely to have it barred; above anything else, they are known to be arrogant. They will expect us to come in so they can pick us off. However, we will not be so easily overwhelmed.”

* * *

“'We will not be so easily overwhelmed,'” Gavin repeated, circling in the darkened corridor with his cross held at arm's length. “Blah, blah, blah.” Currently, all that he knew was that he and Cole were up against it, and alone in some God-forsaken corner of the castle.

They had stormed the entrance, as planned, it being unbarred. There was nothing dangerous in the unkempt castle gardens or the stony, forest-lined road up to it, and Fowler had even warned them not to be complacent, citing some bible reference that was probably about vigilance.

Gavin wouldn't know. He hadn't kept up with his Latin.

The candles in the place were all lit on their gold sconces when they entered, surely some infernal trap of the demons' design. The antechamber was a tall ceilinged room with a black and white smooth stone floor, leading directly to a large staircase and two corridors to the side of it, tailing off into darkness. There were tapestries and paintings on the walls, a lavish decoration typical of old, decadent nobility, but Gavin didn't bother focussing on them. He wasn't here to critique interior design.

The party had moved through the antechamber in their large group, each sporting their favoured weapon. Tina and the older of her apprentices, Xin, had their swords drawn, the younger one, Li Hua, was clutching a holy symbol Gavin didn't recognise and a lit torch. Aside from that, the weapons were much the same across the European hunters; the Andersons, Murray and Fogel had a gun each, Skarsson an axe and a torch and the three clergymen their traditional crossbows, stakes, bibles and holy water strapped over their red cassocks, giving them a bulked up impression. DuPont, too, had a torch.

Gavin was covered on all bases, as far as he was concerned. He had two flintlocks, loaded and holstered, a boot dagger, two stakes, a torch and a big fucking axe.

It had been a while since he'd gone after vampires; they were slippery and tricky, like cats, and as much as he liked cats, he recognised it was easier to catch a dog. They couldn't twist in their own skin. Werewolves were his thing, mostly, along with anything else shambling and unholy that came lurching out of the Schwarzwald. He'd become so proficient with an axe in his time that he hardly needed to use any other weapon, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew things could always go wrong.

And go wrong they did.

They came across a blonde haired woman in the main hall, running down and draping herself over the stairs in what looked like a faint. “Madamoiselle!” Fowler had called out, their group expanding their ranks but not yet separating.

The woman had then turned and risen. Her blue eyes pleaded, terror written across her beautiful face. “Please!” She cried, “Please!”

Fowler had approached cautiously, a wise plan of action, given that immediately following, she revealed her true nature. She bore her fangs and flew unnaturally towards the Évêque. Swiftly, clinically, he shot her in the heart and they watched as her body hit the floor with a cold, dead _thud_ and crumbled to nothing but an ashy ruin.

“Let us advance, and-” Fowler began to say, heading back, when the candles in the chandelier above them and the torches along the walls blew themselves out with a hushed _whoof_. “On your guard!”

The party huddled in closer, shoulder to shoulder, back to back so they would not be ambushed from behind. An almighty, terrified screaming struck up from somewhere above them in the castle, shrill and helpless, prompting a round of sharp breaths and blind glancing. A woman. She sounded both distant and eerily present.

The only light remaining was that of the torches in their hands, casting puddles of light around them that seemed impossibly small. It was as if the walls had receded and the darkness had slithered in, sinuous and knotted, all Gavin could see were the other hunters, all he could hear their laboured breathing, shuffling feet, and the blood pounding through his own head. Readying himself, he gripped his weapons tighter, axe in his right hand and torch in his left, he swallowed.

All hell broke loose; dark, tattered shapes flew at them from unseen corners and the flames of the torches flittered and roared as if in a wind. There was an angered cry from one of the others, and Gavin swung the axe as a shape passed in front of him, using his momentum to bring it back around and forward again for another blow. He hit something, he knew it. There was a connection, a cry, a hiss, and there was dark blood on the blade when he returned it to his field of vision.

A crack of thunder sounded exactly as a flash of lightning illuminated the room. There had been no clouds before – the night had been blessedly clear – but meteorology hardly mattered now. “My God,” Gavin uttered, staring up at the high ceiling of the room they stood in. For in the flash, he'd glanced up like a prayer to the sky and seen something so horrible, so terrifying, that he prayed that it had only been an illusion of the light.

He thought the ceiling had been... undulating.

It was like a black, crawling mass was up there, as when rats claw over each other on the ground, without awareness or separation, driven only by the relentless push of the instinct to swarm.

The party was split now into smaller groups as a result of the action; Gavin was with Cole – he was pressed back to back with the younger man – but he could see Skarsson, Murray and Hank at the foot of the stairs, the clergymen and Li Hua nearer the door, and Fogel, Tina and Xin seemed to be directly across the room from them. Some of them sported scratches and disarrayed clothing, and Hank had drawn a stake alongside his gun. Dark blurs obscured them from his vision periodically, and he watched the others lash out or lashed out himself as he judged appropriate to distance.

All of a sudden, with a shriek, the torch-bearing apprentice, Li Hua, was snatched. It was almost instantaneous as far as Gavin could see, her torch barely even travelled with her, instead clattering to the paved floor as she was whisked up and out of the light. He did catch her petrified expression though, halfway through the air, and now it was seared into his mind like a lasting apparition, or the spot in your vision like after you look too close to the sun for too long.

Chen shouted something in a language Gavin didn't know, sharp and clear, expecting a response.

None came.

Then, there was a dropping sound, a plopping as of something sticky. Something was falling to the floor in the centre of the room, the space the party had just vacated. A great black blob, leathery and writhing like the... the thing he had seen on the roof.

“Go! Go!” someone shouted. Gavin thought it had been Fowler, but equally it could have been Marcel. Either way, the lights from the other groups began to disappear around corners and up stairs, and Gavin simply grabbed a stunned Cole's elbow and pulled him down another corridor, away from the thing in the middle of the room.

There is something terribly uncomfortable about going directly from sound into silence.

The roaring in Gavin's ears seemed louder than ever before, his own blood and footsteps and breathing making up for the disparity. The corridor never seemed to end, they just ran on for what seemed like hours into the unknown, darkly illuminated painting after painting lining the walls and retreating off into the shadow as they passed. Just as Gavin began to think that this long, dark hall was some magic trick, it ended and morphed into a T shape.

They resumed a defensive position, back to back, circling, eyes straining to see if something would come at them.

“Give me the torch,” Cole said eventually, and though Gavin suspected it was only to fill the silence, he handed it over, pulling out his cross instead to hold at arm's length.

“'We will not be so easily overwhelmed.' Blah, blah, blah,” he muttered. They continued to circle, and Gavin realised that on the wall they had come to was mounted a portrait. It seemed elaborate, but it was too dark to tell and he still wasn't inclined to study it, potentially losing concentration for if... when something came for them. Suddenly, something on it moved. “Shit!”

“What?”

Gavin gulped. It must have only been a trick of the light. “Nothing. Let's move on.”

They made their way down corridor after corridor, another seemingly endless maze. They passed doors which they were not confident enough to open. Strange sounds and voices came from behind them, telling of more demonic entities within. A group of two was not nearly enough to do anything other than try to meet with the party again; no doors with sounds like that should be opened with only a company of two.

A thud had them both jumping to attention. “Why did we not do this in the day?” Cole questioned under his breath.

The answer came to Gavin's mind immediately, one drummed into him by Fowler during his youth; _What lives in the dark shall die in the dark. So the Lord commands it_. But that seemed pointless to say at this juncture, so Gavin simply grunted.

All at once it grew cold without a single breath of wind, slithering up as though their skin was glass of window panes which the frost had crept upon in the night. “You dare to come into my house,” a sultry, male voice seemed to say from all around them, “without invitation?”

Gavin glanced around, and he could tell Cole was doing the same by the sweeping movement of the torch. “Show yourself, beast!” he cried. Provoking was his style. It usually worked.

A tutting came from somewhere. “Your manners,” the voice chided.

Suddenly, Cole cried out, stumbling back onto Gavin, who turned only in time to see a pale, fanged face leering into their pool of light. Without thinking, he ran again, dragging Cole with him and causing the young man to drop his torch, plunging them into a blackness they could only hope lead straight to somewhere defensible.

They burst out into an inner courtyard; they were surrounded by dark eaves and stone pillars, but other than that they were in a paved shrubbery, open to the sky and the castle walls punctuated only by unlit windows. There were still no clouds, despite the earlier lightning – the stars were visible and the moon was full, casting them in a silver-grey monotone.

No sooner had he got his bearings and made to take defensive stance than an elegant, black figure appeared in front of him in a coalescence of dust. The same pale face from earlier, eyes dark, soulless pits, features unnatural. He would even call it beautiful if he didn't know the monstrosity underneath it all.

Gavin's eyes widened and he swung the axe, but the creature swept back its arm into his raised one, hitting it so hard he cried out and dropped the weapon, sharp pain shooting up his very bone.

He thrust his cross forward while reaching for his pistol, desperately placing all his hope in God, something a little foreign to him, despite his profession, but the vampire merely laughed and gripped the wooden symbol right on the cross point, ripping it out of Gavin's hand and casting it across the courtyard. Its hand had barely even smoked.

A second later and Gavin was twisted, spun round to face the other way, neck surrounded by a strong, constricting hand. His free hand came up of its own accord to tug on the appendage, but he was trapped between a solid chest and an unrelenting strength, his air supply being cut off. He couldn't angle his pistol hand back far enough towards the vampire, and slowly he felt the beast's other hand drawing up his waist towards it before yanking it back at the wrist in some awful parody of a dance.

Now Gavin could see the rest of the courtyard, Cole barely ten feet away from him, facing down his own vampire. This one was taller still, and it was as if the young man was staring up at an indomitable giant, dwarfed by its towering shadow. Gavin did a double take; the other vampire looked exactly the same as the one currently choking him.

The vampire moved towards Cole, who fired off the remaining round in his pistol. The shot hit the beast in the shoulder, but it barely even flinched, continuing to move forward with only a momentary sidewards slant. It dealt with the dagger Cole then drew in much the same way as Gavin's axe had been dispatched, and it dropped to the ground with a silver clatter.

The monster was upon Cole now, who was backing up in the way only a truly cornered man can. Gavin knew; they'd had it. They were going to die in this courtyard at the hands of unholy demons. They would be killed and then fed upon like wolves tearing into the elk they'd picked off from the herd. Spots in his vision were going black.

The moon looked on brightly, and Gavin wished he was back in his forest.

The other vampire stepped forward and took Cole's head in its hands, expression entirely blank. Gavin cried out as the beast's piercing blue eyes met his, and Cole's neck snapped under its pressure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Including all the other chapters, this will be one of the longest things I've ever written, and I have many more chapters to post if you guys like it (I'm quite nervous about this one). The title is from a French folk song [Nous n'irons plus au bois](https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=3456). I'm on tumblr [@elderbwrry](https://elderbwrry.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin wakes up to find himself... not dead. He'll just have to figure out some way to escape, and hope the vampires don't find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight violence this chapter, along with liberal use of hypnotism.

Gavin woke with a start. His whole body hurt; his neck, arms, chest, legs.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position, realising belatedly that what he was lying on were black, silken sheets and what he was leaning back against was a headboard. He was on a bed. It was very large, and Gavin was sure he could roll over in either direction and still not fall off.

He looked down at his bare legs. All he was wearing was a cream coloured shirt, a billowing thing with a loose cord to pull the collar tight, like what nobles wore. This wasn't what surprised him most, however; after all, he was alive.

Turning onto his front, he made to crawl to the edge of the bed, but a sharp sting ruptured through his side and his shoulder as he reached forward his left arm, and he had to stifle his shout of pain. Gingerly, he lifted up the hem of the shirt to see what was causing it. In the spot just below his ribs there was a ring of red, bloody and as of teeth.

He had been bitten.

Quickly, he tried to assess the severity of the situation; the wound wasn't mangled at all and he didn't remember receiving it, so it must have been done while he was unconscious. It was fresh, although not bleeding, so it must have been done fairly recently. He didn't remember ingesting any blood of the vampire, and his heart still beat defiantly, so they hadn't turned him at least. Comforting.

His shoulder on that side hurt too, and when he pulled down the collar of the shirt, there was a similar wound low on the fleshy part leading to his nape.

He felt wrong, violated, sick; he had been stripped and fed on. He tried to squash a rising wave of panic. Getting captured was a good thing, he tried to convince himself – it meant he was still alive and could still fight. And besides, he had been prepared for this when he joined the DPD in the first place. He had been prepared.

Unfortunately, a boring old monk telling you that you might be fed on, trapped, killed, turned was much easier to accept than when it was actually happening.

Placing his feet gently on the ground in case the floor creaked or something snatched at him, he stood, looking around. It was night still, or perhaps again, as he could tell through the windows in the bedroom. They were large with black frames and heavy curtains, and that was where he went first, checking for latches and openings. The first one didn't budge, but the second swung open enough for him to get his head and shoulders through. He could have escaped through there, if not for the fact that he was several storeys up. The ground practically swum beneath him and he sighed in irritation, leaning back in.

He cast around for clothes – his clothes, any clothes – hoping he might find one of his concealed weapons in them, or at least some kind of substantial covering, but there were none.

The room did, however, have a vanity-type desk to one side of it, and Gavin rushed over to it, pulling open desks and rifling through papers he found there, all written in a language he didn't understand. There was a jug on it and, once he realised it was filled with clean, fresh water, he gulped down half of the contents. Along with it, there were some bottles on the desk and a mirror, and he contemplated which would be better to smash and use as a weapon. He decided on a bottle.

It was a bottle of cologne, so when it splashed back off the windowsill he smashed it on, he got the strong scent on his hands. He would just have to work around it.

To his surprise, the bedroom door wasn't locked, and he inched out of it, checking and double-checking around every corner, holding the bottle up over his shoulder, ready to strike. Vampires could move faster than one could see, so he would have to rely on all his senses and intuitions if he wanted to make any progress. He was glad the shirt hung to mid-thigh length.

Although, he thought, he would happily run bare-arsed through the town if it meant he was back in human civilisation, safe and alive.

He passed corridor after corridor, now illuminated by candles. The floors here were cold against his feet and the walls were the same dark stone as every other wall, but he could at least see. There were portraits and cabinets full of all sorts of strange things – some stuffed animals glared down at him behind the dusty glass of one – but no weapons could be found hanging on the walls. Eventually, he found his way to the staircase, and he rushed to look over the bannister and gauge how far down he had to go. “God,” he muttered, seeing the distance below him.

That moment, he felt a brush of wind, and knew something was behind him.

He whipped round, bottle still raised, to see one of the two vampires from the courtyard standing a few feet away from him, arms behind his back, observing Gavin with a disinterested expression.

It was the blue eyed one. The one that killed Cole.

“Brother!” He called, and the whole castle seemed to shake. “Your pet has gotten out. Come take care of it.”

Gavin lunged at him, swinging the bottle end, but he disappeared as he reached him, causing him to stumble. His eyes widened as something grabbed the back of his shirt, but before he had time to move again he was flying through the air faster than anyone should ever be able to, back down corridors blurred by motion.

He was slammed up against a wall back in the bedroom, pain jolting through his spine at the force of it. There was an arm across his chest and a hand on his wrist, keeping the bottle and his hand pinned up above his head. His feet weren't touching the ground. The thing was taller than him and supernaturally strong, and his ongoing struggles barely yielded any give.

“Stop that,” the vampire ordered, lip curling. He twisted Gavin's hand, forcing him to drop the bottle. Rather than do nothing, Gavin spat in his face.

The vampire stepped back, wiping his cheek as Gavin's feet hit the floor and he clung to the wall for support. He looked murderous, and he swiftly stepped forward to backhand Gavin across the face so hard he staggered and fell to his knees, seeing stars.

He was still coming to his senses when the vampire shoved him over and picked him up like a bride. Gavin would have hit out, but he was flung into the middle of the bed before he had a chance.

“Oh, here you are,” another voice said, and when Gavin opened his eyes, he saw that the dark eyed vampire had joined them, this one's porcelain face the picture of his brother.

Suddenly, it struck Gavin. “The brothers DuArqué,” he breathed.

“The very same,” the dark eyed one bowed.

They had worn similar dark clothes the night when... but now the blue eyed one wore a jacket with a collar buttoned up to his jaw, and the dark eyed one just a white shirt with an open collar under a black waistcoat. The second looked younger, even, shorter, and his hair was curly rather than straight like his brother. Other than that, they were virtually identical, and Gavin couldn't stop himself from glancing between them for the differences.

The dark eyed one started crawling over the bed, reaching where Gavin had pressed himself up against the headboard again and extending a snow white hand to turn his head to the side, examining the place where his brother had struck him. “Hm, that will bruise beautifully,” he mused.

“Oh, his heart is pumping like a little _lapine_ ,” he continued, and Gavin felt a pang of offence at the feminine noun even as he recognised his own heart hammering away inside his ribcage. “My name is Connor,” he said with a sweet smile, then gesturing to the other, who had sat down in the chair by the desk and was putting right the papers Gavin had messed up. “This is Richard. What are you called?”

“You...” Gavin stuttered, “you bit me.”

“That's not-” Connor began.

“And _you_ killed Cole!” he shouted at Richard.

“Is that what that child was,” Richard intoned dryly without turning from his task.

“What is your name?” Connor asked again more dangerously, this time placing a heavy hand on Gavin's chest.

Connor's hand was pushing down, and Gavin could feel his inhalations being restricted as he finally coughed out, “Gavin.”

“Gavin,” Connor breathed, letting up the pressure and instead trailing his hand down Gavin's stomach. “Interesting.”

In a flash, Connor was gone and back again, no longer on the bed but arranging several weapons on a small side table that had appeared out of nowhere. Gavin recognised them as his own weapons.

“You came in here quite brazenly,” Connor picked up one of Gavin's pistols. “You and your _friends_.” He aimed at the headboard, roughly where Gavin was sitting. “Who are you?”

“I'm not telling you a fucking thing,” Gavin ground out, keeping his ground.

Connor fired the pistol, and Gavin flinched, failing to keep himself from making a high pitched sound of fear at the bang. The vampire brought the gun up to his lips and blew away the smoke.

Gavin slowly turned his head to the place the bullet had stuck in the bed, two inches to the left of his head.

“Who,” Connor's voice was quiet, dangerous, “are you?” He cocked his head, eyes boring into Gavin's like the stub left by a cigar as one ground it out, like a memory of fire. Gavin felt sure he could see something change within those eyes, like a light which captured his attention, beckoning to him through dense treed. Suddenly things hurt less, and he wanted to hear Connor's voice over and over, a soothing canticle bearing him to something sweeter than sleep. “Knights Templar? Decapitari? DPD? You're not a Watcher, are you?”

“For the last time, you're about five centuries late for the Knights Templar,” Richard said, slapping down some of his pages. “Let it go.”

Gavin blinked. He knew about the Decapitari - some of them were even part of the DPD - but he had never heard of these Watchers, and the way Richard spoke of the Knights Templar, it sounded like they'd only just dealt with them yesterday. He didn't know exactly how old the DuArqués were – hadn't paid attention when Fowler had mentioned it – so it was conceivable they could have been around in the fourteenth or thirteenth, or even twelfth, century.

“You never know how these things stick around,” Connor said grimly.

“I'm DPD,” Gavin offered. It seemed so pointless not to tell them.

Connor beamed at him. “I thought so! I haven't seen that many priests since the last orgy I went to.” Then, he picked the other of the pistols and shot at Gavin's other side, in the board near his head. “Why are you here?”

Gavin didn't flinch this time; he was calm. Connor would never truly hurt him, and shying away from whatever the vampire wanted him to do was just so pointless. “There were reports of deaths. The Évêque made it seem like they had been investigating for a while.”

“I told you to go easy on the hunting, brother,” Richard said, shaking his head.

Connor acted as if he hadn't heard his brother. “Will they be back?”

“Likely,” Gavin replied.

“How many?”

“I don't know.”

That response seemed to anger Connor, because he snatched up Gavin's boot dagger from the table before him, leaped nimbly onto the bed and sank down to straddle him, holding the knife to his leg, drawing blood in a long line across his thigh. “How many?”

As before with the gunshot, the pain seemed absent, but he got a cold feeling in his chest because he hadn't done what Connor wanted him to do. Resisting was just so pointless. “There were twelve of us when we attacked. They'll call in reinforcements now because of the casualties. It's difficult to tell how many will come, but they'll want to mount the offensive as soon as possible. They shouldn't get more than ten more people by the end of the month, though.”

Connor hummed contentedly, giving Gavin a smile that warmed him to his core. The vampire looked down at the wound he'd just inflicted, swept his fingers through the blood spilling out and put them in his mouth. He hummed again, and then said, “Thank you, my dear. Come.”

He got to his feet and offered Gavin a hand, helping him up and then off the bed. “Move, Richard,” he said to his brother as they approached the chair, and he must have, because Connor guided Gavin down to sit facing the mirror. He rested his hands on Gavin's shoulders, straightening his shirt “Look at yourself, _lapine_.”

Gavin took in his own appearance; he was very pale, and he looked sickly grey next to the white of the shirt, the scar on his nose standing out more than ever. The bruise on his cheek was, indeed, promising to bloom in an array of purples and reds, highlighting his cheekbone, but it wasn't this that fascinated him. It was the ring of bruises around his neck, blues and purples in the shape of fingers, placed right where Connor had choked him yesterday. He reached up to touch it.

“You like it?” Connor dragged the chair around easily, turning Gavin to face his brother, then placing his head on the hunter's shoulder. “What do you think, Richard?”

The taller vampire drew his eyes impassively up and down Gavin's seated form, gaze sticking only on his neck before flipping his eyes to Connor. “I think you should get him some god-damn trousers.”

“You're no fun.” Connor made Gavin stand, taking him back over to the bed and laying him down on the edge, positioning his limbs easily. Now all Gavin could see was the high, dark ceiling, so he listened instead.

Connor's voice sounded first. “Come, have something to eat.” When no sounds of movement came, he added, “I'll take the hypnosis off him, I know you prefer it that way.”

Richard then climbed on the bed to kneel by Gavin's head, and, feeling woozy from Connor's praise, Gavin smiled up at his icy eyes. Connor settled in between his legs, hands coming up to rest on his knees. Gavin felt relaxed, warm and so, so far from the religion and restriction of the DPD.

“You had best hold him down,” Connor said, as though far away. “He's going to be a struggler.”

Richard's hands planted themselves firmly on his shoulders, pressing him back into the soft sheets. It was lovely.

Then, Connor's fingers snapped, and the illusion fell away. It was as if Gavin had woken up again. He found himself in the clutches of two demons, dragged into their den and exposed. He growled and struggled, but they clamped down hard.

He felt a bite on his leg, the inside of his thigh above his knee, and he cried out; there was a deep ache there of a vein-puncturing wound, and he could feel a sucking sensation.

“Not too much, brother,” Gavin watched the one called Richard murmur as he raised Gavin's arm to his mouth, pushed aside the sleeve of his shirt and bit down hard, right above the crucifix faith tattoo the Church had emblazoned him there with to mark him out as a hunter.

With the pain and the loss of blood, it didn't take long for the blackness to eat Gavin's vision whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other groups of hunters Connor mentions are partly borrowed - in Grimm, Grimms or hunters are called Decapitari, and in Buffy, the watchers are the hunting group (kind of) that keep watch over the Slayer. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It hasn't been beta'd and I edited it while ever so slightly tipsy, so please forgive any mistakes. Thank you all for your wonderful comments and kudos! Happy Halloween.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Connor wants you at dinner,” Richard said, stepping away and heading back out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some religious-based and internalized homophobia

“Can you move?” Richard asked Gavin.

Gavin wasn't sure he could. He was so tired and sore and he couldn't think. “Yes,” he said, and it came out raspy. He didn't look round.

“Put these on,” he heard, followed by a cloth flop and footsteps back out the door.

Gavin lay there, feeling every twinge and process of his body, trying to summon the strength to get up. He was still spread-eagled on the edge of the bed, roughly where he had been left; he'd tried not to move except to drain the jug again and use the small restroom he'd discovered across the hall, crawling back to the same place because it seemed easier.

He sniffed and let his head fall to the side, his throat working painfully around a dry mouth, too tired to care about the tear rolling down his face. Nobody was there to see it anyway.

To his own personal shame, he let out small whimper when he finally pushed himself into a sitting position on shaking arms, clutching his left arm to himself the moment he was stable, as if he could hold in the ache that still seemed to be haemorrhaging out of the wound. There was a line of dried blood from the bite mark on his leg trailing all the way down to the sole of his foot, dark and flaky, a small pool of it dried a few inches away. He tried to ignore it, refusing to look for longer than a second, just as he was refusing to assess the damage to his arm, but he could feel that the skin was ripped; he had been a struggler after all.

Over the back of the chair lay crisply folded clothes. Realising what the vampire wanted, he was all the more glad he'd said he could move; he wasn't sure he could handle the humiliation of being dressed like a doll. Not on top of everything else.

Slowly, in a feat of weight counterbalance, he got to his feet and hobbled over to the clothes. He expected that maybe it would only be simple clothing, just a new shirt and a pair of trousers at most, but going through it, it seemed more like fancy dress. Not that he was a stickler for fashion – traipsing around after werewolves, he usually went for utility and warmth over anything else – but some of the clothes seemed just slightly out of date, something only a few of the nobility had still worn in his youth, finely made and comprehensive in terms of items.

There were trousers and another shirt in the standard style for wealthy men – he even found undergarments – but the embroidered waistcoat and jacket were decidedly antiquated. Perhaps it was the gold filigree over navy that did it, because there were no marks of age on them. Tucked under that was a white lace cravat, another older touch, undoubtedly of high quality for such intricacy of design, and a pair of black leather shoes sat on the floor.

He tried not to move too fast as he disrobed, but the three bites on his left side still hurt, leaving him gritting his teeth. He had been injured far worse before in his extensive experience of having things attack him, but he couldn't get over the idea that it was _teeth_ that had gone into him. They were _bite marks_. Having worked with werewolves for so long, bites were the one thing he'd had to avoid. Scratches weren't great, but they wouldn't turn someone like a bite would. His mentality that bites were to be avoided like the plague had his skin crawling at his current situation, like something was still under there, at work in a way he couldn't understand or control.

“Fucking vampires,” he muttered as he slipped on the undergarments.

He didn't know how long he took, but he was still struggling with the cravat when the door creaked. Eerily, in the mirror it seemed to move of its own accord, but when he turned around, Richard was standing there, watching him out of narrow eyes. “You're having difficulty,” he noted.

“Of course I'm fucking-” Gavin broke himself off, hanging his head and letting his left arm drop in exhausted frustration. He was finding it hard holding it up, as if the bites had left it deadened, and every time he thought he'd secured something, his muscles would cramp and mess it up again.

Wordlessly, the vampire crossed to him and took the cravat, putting it round his neck and fixing it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. It took all of Gavin's self-restraint to refrain from punching the thing, but it was hopeless, and he feared what the vampire would do to him far more than he hoped he might defeat it.

 _There is no way I could win_. He repeated the mantra round and round in his head, because the only way he even possibly had a chance at living was to find a way out of the castle that wouldn't be noticed. He needed to wait.

“Connor wants you at dinner,” Richard said, stepping away and heading back out of the room. Gavin noticed that he too was wearing fine clothes – finer than the comparatively plain last set, rippling like the fabric was darkness more than fibre – still buttoned right up to the jaw, but ornamented this time with coat tails and a sapphire brooch at its breast. Then, at the door, the vampire stopped, as if expecting him to follow.

“Dinner?” the question came out more surprised than Gavin would have liked.

The vampire cocked his head. “Humans do need to eat, do you not? Surely it hasn't been so long that you can now subsist on light and water alone, like plants? Come.”

Richard lead the way down flights of stairs, always a few yards ahead through more endless and endlessly similar corridors until they reached a dining hall. Gavin was inordinately tired, and they moved slowly as his limbs refused to function as he knew they should. It suited him though, as he was trying hard to memorise the route, trying so hard that the hall quite crept up on him, and all of a sudden the place seemed to widen into a cavernous space decorated with shadowy paintings, lit only at the end by a roaring hearth despite the temperate season.

There was a table there, spanning the middle third of the hall's width and flanked by three chairs, from what Gavin could see. Silhouetted against the fire was a dark figure, slender and gracefully leaning on one arm against the table, turning at their arrival.

“Ah, _lapine_ ,” Connor said when they drew close enough, waiting until Richard peeled off to his chair in order to approach and take Gavin's hand. Squashing his urge to yank it away, Gavin watched with no mild disgust as the vampire kissed it with gentle lips and an intense expression, a flash of ivory fangs coming out when he smiled right after, releasing him and gesturing to the chair on the right. “Please, sit.”

Though it grated on him, Gavin did as he was told, pulling the chair in with a purposeful scrape that caused Richard's eyebrow to twitch. Richard sat on the long side of the table, directly opposite the fire, while the other that called himself Connor took the place at the far end, facing Gavin.

The dark eyed vampire was also dressed extravagantly in a full coat and tails, rings gleaming on its fingers, an ornate brooch to match its brother's pinned to it as well. Connor's jewel, however, was ruby to Richard's sapphire, and as Gavin took in the room more fully, he realised how out of place the sapphire glinting at Richard's chest was; everything here was entirely black and blood red, the tiled floor in those same colours as well as the walls, the architecture of a lavish and Gothic style.

Connor then clapped its hands, a crisp, resounding noise which almost immediately had a figure drawing out of the darkness with a plate. The dish of silver was placed in front of Gavin, a variety of roasted food upon it, with a chalice of something placed down as well, cutlery swiftly following. The pangs of hunger distracted him to such an extent that he almost missed who it was that served him; in the harsh and flickering light, he could have sworn it to be the same blonde woman Fowler had slain the night of the attack.

“How is she alive?” he breathed, attention glued to her as she disappeared back into the black with a snarl thrown over her shoulder back at him.

“Never mind about her,” Connor leaned forward, waving a dismissive hand as he regarded Gavin almost eagerly. “Go ahead, eat.”

Gavin eyed the plate suspiciously. By way of delaying, he instead went for the cup, drawing it to his nose and sniffing it.

Connor chuckled even as his brother said nothing, did nothing, sat stoically straight watching Gavin only out of the corners of his eyes. “You must eat, Gavin, for your strength. We haven't slipped anything in.”

Throwing caution to the wind, he sipped the cup; it was wine, and fine at that. He hummed, licking the sweet drink off his lips and trying to stop his hand from shaking as he set the thing down. “So... what? You fatten me up like some prize lamb so you can have a good feed one of these days?”

Connor pouted. “Why no, we-”

“Yes.” Richard interrupted plainly, earning a glare from his brother.

Gavin grinned at him, as if that did anything to the existential terror sitting at the bottom of his lungs and threatening to claw its way up his throat. “And you plan to have your fun before then, huh? Fuck me up every way you can think of?” He snatched up his fork, taking pleasure in the idea that his brazen display may just have shocked them into silence. “May as well enjoy it then,” he speared a potato and stuck it whole into his mouth, slouching.

Without prompting, two figures came forth from the darkness, the blonde woman again and a man, also blond and youthful, both bringing chalices. The woman set hers down next to Richard, who did nothing to acknowledge her, the man going to Connor. Connor took the man's hand, running his own over it before pressing a kiss to his wrist, right on the pulse point, a patch of skin littered with silvery scars. The man didn't react at all, eyes never moving from their downcast position. Gavin got the impression that he was a familiar, under the vampire's hypnotic thrall rather than turned completely, unable to even really understand what was happening other than on a drone level. Gavin tried to ignore the idea that this might end up as his own fate, instead picking up more food.

It seemed that the brothers DuArqué really did command forces greater than just themselves. No wonder, then, that the DPD had been unable to slay them with just that party, stacked with eminent hunters as it had been. There must have been some limit to their power, however, because during the attack they had gone after the smallest group; him and Cole. On the one hand, it was natural pack behaviour to go after the weakest, but on the other, vampires were not natural. They were purely demonic, twisted, supernatural. Say what you want about werewolves, Gavin thought, they at least stuck to natural, animal habits.

So, mouth mostly full and lounging in his chair in a way that would have earned a smack from his mother were he twelve again, Gavin asked, “Why me?”

“Pardon?” Richard responded after a short pause.

Gavin shrugged. “Why'd you go after me? I can't have been the tastiest outta our bunch. Too sinewy.”

The vampires exchanged a glance, as if communicating through sight alone. “You smelled right,” Connor said finally.

Gavin's eyebrows shot up, and he laughed mockingly. “I 'smelled right'? You picked me for my natural musk?” He laughed again. “Good one, fang face.”

Neither of them said anything for a while, Richard sipping the contents of his cup in what could almost be a smug fashion, amused at Gavin's snark. Or as close as he could get, anyway, seeing that he didn't seem to be particularly emotive. Connor was scowling, more of a pout than anything else, but there was a glint in those dark eyes like the flash of a silver blade's edge.

“What made you join the priesthood?” the first said, tapping his finger against the cup's stem.

Gavin shrugged. “Why'd you care?”

“Conversation.”

Swallowing, Gavin sighed and gazed at a point in space, trying to think of a suitably aggravating response. “It seemed like a good career move,” he scooped up a carrot. “And the clothes are to die for.”

“Your faith is in a rather an atrocious state, Father,” Richard said, his tone managing to be both bored and mocking.

“I'm not-” Gavin began to rebuke, mouth full again. Then, he huffed out a breath. “My father kicked me out.”

“Oh?” Connor's interest was clearly piqued, and it leaned forward across the table, having found an inroad back into wherever this interrogation was leading. “A fine boy like you? What could have lead to such a thing?” At Gavin's blank look, it smiled blandly. “Humour me, we are celebrating after all.”

Gavin had half a mind to ask exactly _what_ was being 'celebrated', but something told him it wouldn't be the right move. After all, it was most likely a celebration of their recent murder of Gavin's colleagues, or a celebration of his own capture. Swiping up his cup, he stared into the dark red depths.

When Gavin joined the DPD, he had been made to confess. He told everything to some faceless priest behind a curtain, spilled his guts in the hope that he would never have to do so again. Every sin he had ever committed, catalogued in some vain search for forgiveness, reassurance, normality – for everything he'd lost with careless actions. Yet, here he was, being questioned again but by a wholly opposite agent. If he refused to speak, the chance was one of them would just hypnotise him, and the whole truth would pour out without stopper or course.

Finally, he conceded. “I shared my bed with the wrong person and he disapproved.” He looked up; both vampires' eyes were trained on him, like cats waiting to pounce, Richard's head turned fully for the first time that evening. The only movement was of Connor's hand, fiddling with something small and silvery looking. “I was young.”

“Oh, there must be more to it than that,” Connor smiled, and Richard tipped its head in such a way that said it agreed.

Gavin's lip curled. “Okay, well what made you become vampires, huh? Since you're so fucking interested in me.”

“You assume it was a choice.” Richard said.

“Well you've both taken to it so well.”

“After nine or so centuries, you would be surprised what one can get used to.”

“That doesn't- wait, nine centuries?” Gavin interrupted himself.

Richard nodded, gazing into the fire. Connor also had a knowing expression on his face.

Gavin had known that the brothers were old, but not that old. There were tomes written about them, their exploits in the Urals, their appearances in the great courts of England and France and Russia, their standing as muses in Florence, but no record that Gavin had ever heard of had traced them as being from quite that long ago. It was possible he was the only hunter who knew – or ever would know – this part of their history. How ironic that he would never get to write it down someday, in the great seminary library where hunters went to become immortalised in ways that didn't first involve becoming unholy.

“Yes. We grew up in a northern region of what is now this republic of France.” Richard continued. In the fire, the flames seemed to dim and begin to dance in shapes that almost resembled a village, little huts made out of coal and ash, livestock and people in the inflamed parody of a puppetry stage. The shadows on the walls grew and encroached in on the three of them, eyes and mouths leering out of the light spots like someone had placed cut paper in front of the hearth. Despite the bluster he had been trying to show, Gavin tensed in apprehension, glancing around at the shadows which seemed both closer and further away than they should be.

“In those days, we were still plagued by raiders from the north. Pirates. Vikings.” The flames leapt, and the incensed image of the village burst into people, running, fear etched into their faces, sparks flying like the clash of weapons. “They came in the early morning when nobody was awake to raise the alarm, and they stayed past nightfall, deciding which of us to choose as slaves and concubines. Our village was decimated. They would have left us nothing but what meagre structures they could not bother to torch.

“They were huddled around a great bonfire they had built when something arrived out of the darkness.” Richard's attention flicked back to Gavin and the fire flared as he said the name: “Elijah.”

Gavin swallowed dryly, shifting in his chair under that piercing gaze, blue eyes almost translucent in the light. His pinprick, hollow pupils were like a hawk diving out of the pale sky, and Gavin very much got the impression that he was the unlucky rabbit about to be snatched up in Richard's wicked talons.

“You've heard of him, I see,” Connor took over. “The last of the great ancient vampire lords. He chose us.”

“My brother and I were the pride of our village,” Richard continued dispassionately, but Gavin couldn't explain what he thought he was hearing in his voice, an intensity that could only be ascribed to someone remembering a powerful, personal experience. “Young and strong and healthy. The two of us were only spared from the bloodbath that ensued because we were tied up to be taken back across the oceans. We had no means to escape, no means of defence. He waited until last to come and turn us.”

“It wasn't our choice, but he wanted us for a reason. He saw what we could be.” Connor added.

“We travelled with him for centuries, learning, growing, until he decided we were ready to go forth into the night.” Richard took a sip from his cup, and finally the fire settled, the ghostly shapes of before forgotten, as if they had melted back into the walls. “Does that answer your question, Gavin?”

Frozen in his chair, Gavin found he was nodding without really understanding – he was still riffling through the vivid things he'd seen, branded into his mind in orange and red.

“Now,” it was as if Richard had retreated back inside himself, pensive and restrained. “Do you think you could see your way clear to answering our questions in return?”

Gavin sat up a little straighter. His mouth was dry, despite the wine in front of him. The truth was stuck in his mouth, vibrating through his tongue as if it wanted him to tell it. And why not tell them? Surely his depravity was at home among demons? His throat worked stiffly as he took a sip of his drink.

“My father was a land owner, down in the south. We were minor nobility before the, uh... revolution,” he cleared his throat. He wanted to say this, he reasoned. He would rather he was forcing the words out of himself than that they were being forced out of him. “Not the richest and not even important outside our region. I was the oldest out of his three sons, and my older sister had married and left home by the time this... happened.

“There was...” he paused, clenching and unclenching his fist. Connor looked about ready to devour him the second he spoke, but Richard was back to staring into the fire. Gavin found himself wishing Richard would go back to focussing on him; at least that way, there was a sharp pressure, a calm expectation to ground himself on. “There was another young man about my age, who worked in the stables. He had golden hair...” He shook his head. He shouldn't reminisce. Better to cut to the chase. “I fucked him, and in the morning a servant woman caught us and told my father.”

His words were greeted only with the crackling of a log on the fire, the reflection of its liquid shapes on the cutlery.

Gavin was expecting something big. He was highly strung, ready for humiliation. When his father had found out, he'd dragged him in front of the entire family, hit him, called him a worthless, godless perversion and announced that no such man would ever bear his name. His two brothers had been too young to understand, really, and his mother wasn't much more sympathetic. Gavin would have to join the priesthood or he would be denounced to the church and put on trial.

What he didn't expect was for Connor to say, “Oh, Richard, I told you. I told you that he...” he drew in a breath, lips curling just a little, “ _understood_.”

“That you did, brother.”

“I just had to have him.” Connor rose, tapping the table excitedly, rings rapping against the polished wood. “Come, Gavin, dance with me.” Music struck up from somewhere unseen. “Please?”

“I-” Gavin felt stuck. They... he... understood? He wasn't sure but... could it be that he felt welcomed among demons? He could scarcely believe the flicker of warmth in his own chest. Even the priest who had heard his confession had condemned him, declaring that the only way he could truly achieve penance was to live and die in the service of the Lord. He didn't want to be condemned, thrown away. He just wanted to love the boy he had fallen for so many years ago. It didn't matter that Valère had been murdered shortly after that time, he wanted it, and the way Connor beamed at him with his hand extended in invitation put a nostalgic lightness in his heart. Perhaps it was only his recent loss of blood.

“I would do as he asks,” Richard told him, quietly, almost as if Connor wouldn't hear. “What harm would it do?”

Carefully, Gavin stood and took Connor's hand, cold, but accommodating and gentle. “May I lead?” the vampire asked.

Gavin nodded.

They begun the dance, the gentle notes of violin and cello rolling over each other as Connor spun him around the dance floor, candles in wall brackets lighting themselves as they passed them until the whole room was filled with light. Gavin found himself pulled in close to the vampire's chest by a strong arm around his waist, causing him to have to tilt his head back to see Connor's expression at all. He was having absolutely no trouble making up for Gavin's lack of strength, supporting him securely, carefully avoiding the bite wounds on his side.

“You're good at this,” Connor murmured fondly, nosing at the shell of his ear, and Gavin, without meaning to, smiled, thinking back on lessons when he was younger. Acceptance, even from such as these, couldn't be so bad after everything, could it?

When they paused, Gavin felt thoroughly whisked away. Still smiling despite himself, he turned back to the table, but Richard was nowhere to be seen, the only trace of him being the great door left slightly ajar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I just wanted to make them dance and wear nice clothes... Also, should I name the chapters?  
> 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin and Richard have... a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: mild dub-con, but no actual sexual content

Gavin should have known better.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, dinner had been... nice. He'd let himself into the self-destructive languor of what he assumed to be his fairly impending death, and, lulled into a sense of acceptance, he'd let himself enjoy things as if he had already experienced all the pain he ever could have been made to experience. He'd begun to forget that the vampires were anything other than just that, started thinking of them as people with personal stories and real feelings rather than just demons.

Connor had sent him to bed after they had finished dinner, during which they had swapped a few more light-hearted anecdotes – Gavin of his time at the seminary and Connor of anything that took his fancy, he'd seen so much – and he'd fallen into a deep and sated sleep that he desperately needed.

Then, in the pitch darkness, he was woken up by the slide of flesh against flesh, a tugging of fabric, and hands he couldn't see, pulling him to and fro until he was bitten into again, taut skin punctured in new places. He cried out and writhed and hot tears fell from his eyes as he repeated the word, “Please,” quietly into the muffled room.

Eventually he passed out.

* * *

He awoke late in the day, purple skimming under the drawn curtains in the weak light of sunset. He was naked on his back, half covered by one of the sheets which had ended up twisted in the night. He was shivering, whether from pain or chill he knew not.

Either side of him was a cold weight, and when he rotated his head to see, he found the two brothers asleep next to him, skin bared and presumably just as naked as he seemed to be. Asleep, he could hardly tell the difference between them, but he thought the one on his left was probably Richard.

Connor's face was buried in his shoulder, embracing his arm, cold fingers feather-light. He looked so peaceful and vulnerable, and hatred for what the vampires had put him through last night sprung up within Gavin, conversely hot and vitriolic. This was a perfect chance to kill the thing, which Gavin's fingers twitched to do, but there were no weapons to hand. Maybe he could find one, break the chair leg quietly to a point, or find something sharp to cut off its head with...

He was going to try to extricate himself, turning the other direction only to find Richard's pale eyes suddenly open and boring directly into his, like mirrors reflecting a clear sky. He started, frantically checking he hadn't woken Connor.

“Fuck! You fucking- uh... hello?” he stuttered, caught out.

Richard said nothing.

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded after another second, anger and fear rearing again.

There was a rustling movement from beneath the sheets, and Richard drew his hand up to Gavin's face. Gavin went cross-eyed watching as the hand threaded into his hairline and swept the stray strands back. Then, Richard's index finger trailed down his forehead and landed on the bridge of his nose. Lowly, the vampire asked, “What's this?”

Gavin frowned. “It's a fucking scar, what do you think?” he replied, voice also low, although whether it was because it felt more appropriate in bed or because he was trying not to wake the other vampire – thus having to deal with his flirting, which Gavin was finding the thought of very disturbing, given how he'd weaponised it last night – he didn't know. He was sure Richard's reason was the latter.

“I mean where did you get it?” There was a hint of threat in the vampire's tone.

“Work.”

Richard smirked, and Gavin belatedly realised he was about to be punished for his resistance. “So you didn't have it when you and your young love made the beast with two backs? A pity, I'm sure he would have liked the rugged edge.”

“Fuck off.”

Unbothered by Gavin's profanity, the vampire shifted a little. Then, he trailed the finger further down over Gavin's lips, down his neck, pressing just a little harder than necessary considering the bruising still staining his throat, and down his chest, making his stomach muscles spasm of their own accord.

Gavin's hand shot up and wrapped around Richard's wrist when his trailing hand reached his navel. “Stop.”

“Fine,” he moved his hand back up, easily countering the strength Gavin was employing to hold him in place, spreading his hand out over Gavin's chest instead. Gavin couldn't help but let out a shuddering breath; he was already shivery, and the hand was cool. “Are you sure you wouldn't like it?”

Gavin shook his head, staring resolutely at the ceiling. “I wouldn't.”

“I would like to make you feel good, Gavin. You could scream with pleasure better than anything my brother would ever give you. It's not an offer I make a lot...” he sighed. “But not until you ask for it.”

“I will never,” Gavin spat, “ask for it.”

Richard hummed. “Don't be so sure.”

They lay in silence for a long while, Gavin having little choice but to huff and re-examine the ceiling he was already achingly familiar with. At some point, Richard started tracing patterns on his skin, causing a hitch in his breath that he told himself was out of chill rather than anything else, least of all being touched gently after so long and so much pain. Later again, Richard rested his chin on Gavin's shoulder, moving so a long line of his chest was pressed against his upper arm. It was horribly intimate, and Gavin felt very much like the mouse that a cat had decided to keep for later.

A breath grazed his neck, and Gavin frowned. “I thought vampires didn't need to breathe.”

“So why do I?” Richard sounded vaguely amused that he was interested. Maybe he was just enjoying having Gavin under his finger like this. Gavin wished it was clearer in tone, but there was something missing in the way the vampire was expressing himself that meant Gavin just couldn't get an emotional read on him. It was frustrating. He supposed that this guessing game was only making the vampire taunting him all the more.

Gavin nodded grudgingly. Anything was better than silence.

“It's true, we don't, but for most it isn't an easy habit to rid oneself of. In life, it's so essential to everything, subconscious but ever-present, one doesn't even think about the relief it brings until one can't do it. Even undead, in order to speak one needs to breathe, so many never stop. I myself have recently reacquired the habit, at Connor's request, for easier communication. You would be surprised how many non-verbal cues breathing denotes. For example, just by your breath, I can read you like a book.”

Nails scratched against him, lightly through the hairs on his chest, and, upon realising how his breath shuddered, he snapped, “Stop it.”

The vampire continued as if he hadn't heard. “But that's rather the point of existence for one such as me. Doing pointless things.” Richard's movements stopped. “You, however...”

Gavin waited for him to continue, but nothing further came forth. “Me, what?”

“You _mortals_ ,” he sounded disdainful. “You're nothing but purpose. You run around, prodded on by emotions and instincts. Eat, sleep, fornicate. It's something I'd quite forgotten. Connor never did though. It's part of why he wanted you so badly. He asked me specially...”

Gavin peered out of the corner of his eye at the vampire on his right, but Connor appeared to still be asleep. He wasn't breathing and Gavin put out of his mind the thought that he was so motionless he could really be dead, the curls of his hair mussed up against the pillow.

The vibrations of Richard's voice were passing into Gavin's arm from his chest, pleasant in a way he wasn't sure he could pinpoint. He was thinking about it for a second, when another light scrape of nails made him realise the vampire had prompted him to speak. “Tell me about the scar.”

“You're back on that, are you?”

He gave a hum Gavin imagined as coming from behind a smirk, despite the lack of emotion within it. “Of course.”

“Why the fuck do you even want to know?”

“You have a problem with me being interested in you? Strange, most people love to talk about themselves.”

“Not to you.”

Gavin felt the head on his shoulder move, nestling in more towards his neck. “Tell me and I'll show you around the castle later,” Richard whispered into the spot just below Gavin's ear, tone just too flat to be properly intimate, but pitched as if it were.

He didn't take the bait immediately.

“It's up to you.”

Gavin hesitated. He really wanted to poke around the castle and Richard knew it. He had dangled this promise in front of him like a carrot for a donkey. The question now was just how long Gavin would be willing to walk until the carrot stopped being worth it. He came to the conclusion Richard must be truly bored to want to know about his sad life. Perhaps he could force the thing to stake himself by showing just how boring he was.

“It was somewhere outside of Geneva, my first solo werewolf hunt. It caught me out and swiped me across the face.”

“You killed it?”

“Yes. It's really not exciting.”

“On the contrary,” Richard said, “hunters generally take on the great infernal beasts in groups. Are you brave or stupid?”

Gavin spluttered, eventually growling out, “Neither, I just don't like people.”

“Is that so.” It wasn't a question. “I don't like werewolves much,” he mused, “they stink and they can be so mercurial. Their human side so rarely measures up to their animal one. The fire in them is... admirable.”

There was a pause as both of them seemed to be thinking about what that meant. Of course werewolves had fire – they were instinct and raw animal energy – but Gavin had assumed that to be the same of most evil creatures. Now... he could see how something like that would seem inaccessible to Richard, who was just as cold emotionally as his skin was. The thing was, though – and Gavin knew this from experience – that it was that very fire that was frequently werewolves' downfall. They could be provoked, made to strike at a target without paying attention to the axe ready to swing, and they would drive themselves onto the sharp edge for a chance to take out their anger. More than once after kills such as these, Gavin had lain restless, wondering if his own weakness was something similar.

“You have a lot of scars,” Richard's hand trailed again until it reached a white line between Gavin's lower ribs, distracting him deftly away from his reminiscence. “They can't all be from werewolves?”

“I've been stabbed a few times,” he confirmed.

“I can see the appeal.”

He ignored the jibe, though the truth in it stung. “Most are from work. I don't even remember when I got half of them.” He thought for a second, trying not to get tugged back into the whirlwind of grim memories of fighting and killing. “Do... you have any?”

“Yes,” Richard sat up and turned to face him, and Gavin almost missed the presence at his side except for the fact that it was warmer without him there. “Here,” he pointed to a patch low on his neck, a silvery ring on white, otherwise untainted skin, a subtle line of muscle defining his throat. “It's the bite which turned me.”

Without thinking, Gavin reached up and touched the mark. It was neat, like Gavin could count each individual tooth if he so wished, gentle fingertips on each tiny divot, exactly on a pulse point under the skin of which no blood beat. When he drew back, Richard was looking at him with some intensity and something Gavin couldn't place, a stirring under the surface of water. When the vampire spoke, the words reverberated in Gavin's own chest like the amount of space that had opened up between them was nothing, and they were still pressed together, too close for comfort.

“And you were so sure you would never ask.”

Gavin shook his head defensively, frowning, turning away from the very sense within himself that Richard had a point. “I didn't. I haven't asked for a fucking thing.”

Richard scoffed. “You did. You are right now, practically. You can't tell?” Gavin must have looked confused, because the vampire stood in a whirl and stormed out of the room, scowling and muttering, “Humans and your... weak senses!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind comments and kudos! They literally make my day.  
> As usual, please tell me if any of my tags need adding to.  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard gives Gavin a tour

Gavin had clearly angered Richard earlier, but the vampire remained true to his word anyway.

Once Gavin had faced the trial of Connor waking up and flirting with him uproariously, he'd spent a very boring night of trying to keep himself occupied. He'd gotten dressed in clothes which he had been given, resembling more his usual clothes, a simple pair of trousers and a shirt along with some boots. For something to do, he'd riffled through the pages in the vanity drawer, but he still didn't understand what they said, and he didn't know why they had been left here anyway, where he could get his hands on them. He'd counted the stones on each wall. Mostly, he'd tried not to think – about everything which had happened in the past few days, about his time in the Black Forest, about his youth.

Eventually, Richard entered without a knock. “You're dressed,” he noted, casting over Gavin's appearance. “Good.” Without further ado, he swept out of the room and down the corridor. Gavin hurried to catch up.

They reached the end of a corridor which Gavin remembered being much longer, lined with the same stone and indistinct tapestry as everywhere else, the tiles of the floor following a pattern that could easily repeat without being noticed. “I've told the walls to behave themselves,” Richard said, when he noticed Gavin frowning at the corner they'd come to.

“Behave themselves?” he blustered.

“Yes, they move. It's a defence mechanism that comes into effect in after a while of us inhabiting a place like this. It gets imbued with our energy and starts to move.” The vampire spoke in a calm tone, as if the walls moving was the most normal thing in the world. Gavin remembered the castle shaking as well, the last time Richard had called for Connor. He thought he'd imagined it, but perhaps not...

“So...” Gavin frowned, “the first time I was here, when we ran down that corridor for ages... that corridor..?”

“It doesn't exist, no.”

“No I- wait, it doesn't exist? As in, at all?”

Richard regarded him coolly.

“Fuck me,” Gavin muttered, looking the place up and down as he momentarily forgot his present company. The vampire just raised an eyebrow, to which Gavin scowled.

Richard led Gavin through to a corridor lined on the right with curtains over windows, looking out over the central courtyard. It was still rather dark, the moon no longer high enough to be visible over the castle walls, so the only light out there came from the few flickering candles in other surrounding windows. Gavin's room had been in one of the several turrets which from the outside had obviously made up main corners of the castle. Gavin was quite possibly a staircase away from inhabiting the role of a kidnapped trophy, a princess in a tower, except that no shining knights were coming to the rescue. He would have to – no, he _could_ rescue himself.

Everything he'd known about the place before had been rearranged. There were still portraits and cabinets on the walls, but they were fewer and further between than before. Gavin was truly shocked about how different the space looked now; it was almost as if the entire castle had changed shape. Gavin was still looking out at the courtyard, trying to take everything in and reorganise his own spacial awareness, when Richard started to walk off to his right. “Come along.”

The tour was particularly whistle-stop, and Gavin was having trouble taking everything in when all the doors were closed and the turnings Richard took were becoming more than he could reasonably remember.

“This is Sofian's room.” Richard would say, indicating one oaken door before whisking off elsewhere.

Then, “This is Chloe's room.” Walk, turn.

“This is the room where the thing we call Farnaby lives.”

“Fuck, slow down, would you,” Gavin called out, breathing heavily from trying to keep up. “Some of us have been fed off recently and can't move fast. Fuck,” his hand went to his side, not sure if the pain was a stitch forming or one of his various wounds. They hadn't even been going that fast. He couldn't help the bitter accusation which snuck into his tone, aimed at Richard for having done this to him.

Stiffly, Richard returned to where Gavin was leaning on a wall. “My apologies.”

“This is ridiculous,” he shook his head. “I'm in impeccable shape.”

“You should eat,” Richard said, regarding him. “We will make a stop at the kitchens on our way around.”

Gavin just breathed for a moment more, slightly doubled over against the wall. He could definitely feel that part of his breathlessness was panic, and he wanted to get rid of it. He was fighting the urge to lunge at the vampire in front of him, kill it, wipe the slightly concerned look off its face and beat it until-

But he couldn't do that. Richard would kill him before he'd even got in the first blow. The bruise still painting his cheek was evidence enough of that.

“Come on, let's fucking go,” he pushed off from the wall and started walking again with purpose, down a corridor which, he now realised, was somehow on the opposite side of the balcony to where they had started. “You certainly have a lot of people living here.”

Richard ignored the implicit request for more information, instead remarking, “I would think 'people' to be a strong word, by your standards.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Gavin growled, glancing over his shoulder to where Richard was coolly watching him forge ahead.

At the look , Richard smoothly returned to motion, as if mocking Gavin for the difficulty he was having with the same actions of something as simple as _walking_. The air disturbed as he passed. “You hunters don't treat my brother or me as people. I highly doubt you would extend the same courtesy to something so far from the human condition as Farnaby, regardless of intelligence.”

Gavin had fallen into step with him, lips pursing. “You aren't people, though. You're vampires. Demons. Things.”

Richard rounded on him, crowding into his space, up against the wall, and flashing his fangs, saying, “Stick to that, then. Pay more attention to how you treat us, because your present inconsistency is maddening. I can _feel_ you changing your mind every two seconds about how you think about us, but it's not that complicated.” He separated out the last few words, but Gavin couldn't tell if it was anger under all that or something else. As if to make sure the message stuck, Richard held the position for a moment, just too close into Gavin's space for comfort, before he continued on as if nothing had happened, only pausing to straighten his own collar.

Gavin had to hurry again to catch up again, huffing. “Whatever. There's a lot of you _things_ here.”

“Royalty has to have a court.”

Gavin snorted. “Royalty?”

Richard smiled a little, and Gavin couldn't work out whether it was at the joke or at him. He suspected the latter. Was that how vampire society worked? That important members were like royals? Was it based on age or deeds or sire? It struck him just how unprepared he was for this, although he hadn't bothered to remember enough of his teachings to know whether his lack of knowledge on vampire hierarchy was because the DPD didn't have the information, or just if he just hadn't paid attention.

As if sensing this line of thought, the vampire stopped at a door and asked, “Are you a man of any learning?”

“Some,” he shrugged, “I studied when I was younger and at the seminary.”

Richard nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps you'll like this.”

He swung open a door and fires flared into life all over a large, tall room, one in the hearth and several candles along the walls. It was a library. There were stacks upon stacks of books lining every inch of the place on shelves of dark wood, a globe sitting by one of the multiple desks, armchairs tucked into cosy nooks.

“Nice.” Gavin looked around, entering past Richard's arm. He maybe didn't like it as much as the vampire had thought he would, but it was certainly interesting to some degree. He didn't think he'd seen this many books in one place since the seminary library, and he'd had no idea it was even possible for a collection like this to be owned privately any more.

The vampire's eyes narrowed. “You don't like it.”

Gavin shrugged. “I was never much for words.”

“Evidently.”

He made a childish face at the vampire.

“You must like something. Poetry?” Richard swept in, selecting quite possibly the last thing Gavin was likely to care about, flying up to a high shelf balcony in a cloud of black dust, briefly becoming a blue-grey smoke before coalescing back into a solid form. It was done so casually, Gavin almost missed it; he'd been taught about the various powers of vampires, but he'd always assumed they were reserved for fighting or hunting... now, Richard didn't even seem to think it a show of power worth acknowledging. “Tell me,” he threw over his shoulder at a bemused Gavin without fully turning round, plucking a book off the shelf and flicking through it. “Are you more of a Renaissance or modern type?”

“I'm not-”

“Hmm, no, maybe not,” Richard descended the balcony steps properly now, book still in hand, frowning into it ever so slightly. He looked... pensive, like there was something he was truly interested in, and honestly, there was a new energy to him in that moment that Gavin hadn't thought was possible, slowly coming out of his shell and into a world of emotion which, while subtle, was actually there. After a moment, Richard looked up at him with a flash in his eyes, exclaiming, “Ah, some Catullus. You know Latin?”

Gavin shook his head. “Once.”

“A pity.” Richard snapped the book shut. “There are so many good ones to choose from...”

Richard stepped closer to Gavin, into his space, and he made to step back only to find the movement blocked by a hand on his waist. “What are you-” he began to ask.

“Shh,” Richard's eyes were closed and his brow furrowed, clearly thinking of what to say. When his eyes opened, Gavin had little choice but to look up into them, something he was becoming uncomfortably familiar with. “Odi et amo,” he began, rattling off the rest more fluently than Gavin could keep up with. It sounded like no Latin Gavin had ever heard spoken by any scholar or holy man, yet he caught just the right consonants that he knew it must be. The vampire had spoken softly, and fixed him with an expression that made him feel like he was trying to rip something out of his brain. “Did you get any of that?”

“Uh,” Gavin frowned, trying to dredge up the language he'd been all too happy to forget. “I... I hate?”

Richard stepped away from him, joy seemingly drained. “I guess not.”

“You could repeat it, I might get something more,” Gavin offered, involuntarily trying to regain the ground Richard had put between them, not sure why he would jump through a hoop for this demon, but willing to anyway, so caught up in the moment and the brief revelation of some kind of passion beneath Richard's cold exterior.

Richard raised a dismissing hand, placing the book down on a table. “No,” then more quietly, “don't worry.”

They left the library, Richard sweeping on ahead as before, their arrangement to slow down seemingly cast away. He lead down a corridor to the end, where a curve in the wall suggested another turret. “This is Connor's bedroom,” he announced, gesturing to the heavy door. “I would not go in there, if I were you. You might not come out.”

“Isn't that the point of the whole damn castle?” Gavin began to protest, but Richard inclined his head seriously, hands behind his back like it would make Gavin any more inclined to respect his authority.

“I speak gravely, Gavin. It is not safe for you in there. Do you understand me?”

Gavin was speechless for a second. He couldn't even begin to broach the hypocrisy of that statement, so he just nodded dumbly.

They moved on, nearer to the east face of the castle, now.

Every so often there were windows, all adorned by long, thick curtains, and he weighed the difficulties of catching one of the vampires in the sun to kill it, but he would have to get one into position at the right time of day and besides, the small area of light would be easy to dodge out of. The vampire would sustain some nasty burns, but the exposure wouldn't be long enough to kill it. He found himself wishing he had kept more up to date on his vampire lore, instead of letting his education drain away as he specialised in baser monsters.

“The paintings are of various people,” Richard explained as they followed the corridor, which was lined alternately with them. “Some we have acquired, some we have been entrusted. Many are of our relations – relations by sire, that is – but some are of old foes.”

Most of the paintings were indeed of people, standing with weapon in hand, armoured, or on a horse. Opulent, with glinting armour and dogs at their heels, or of a darker kind of gravitas, lit from within the paint by candles and draped in trappings of black and crimson velvet. They were all eerie, but none more so than the sparse landscapes, the most unsettling of all among their collection, and Gavin tried to avoid looking at them lest he feel like a prey animal caught in the open.

Everything was cast in strange and shifting light of the real candles that miraculously lit themselves around the corridors, throwing their shadows as they passed. The candles at first postured as welcoming, and the place was certainly different in the yolk-coloured light than it was in the darkness of his first foray through its halls, but there was something wrong about it all. The light was soporific and luxuriant, the way Gavin used to feel at the seminary, when the only requirement was to stay awake but he was failing. There was a feeling as if he could sit down anywhere and sleep, coupled with the feeling of being lured everywhere. There was a dark, shifting and purposeful malevolence, like eyes that flitted around just under the walls, watching which way he went.

What disturbed Gavin most, however, was Richard's shadow. It was always larger than his own, regardless of how close to a light source they stood, disproportionately even to their real height difference. Then there was the fact that it moved of its own accord. Sometimes, its head would turn before Richard's did, or it would appear somewhere unexpected. All too often, Gavin felt like it was waiting, reaching out to him. Which was... disturbing.

“This is my room,” Richard said, stopping again at another ornate door which Gavin hadn't even noticed approaching, what with the revelations of the long gallery, now stretching behind him like a trap. “We can go in if you like.”

Gavin swallowed and then shook his head to the proposition. He would rather not.

Richard's face remained carefully impassive.

From there, they headed downstairs, down the curling main staircase at the centre of the castle. They had been keeping to one expansive floor so far, but now they were back in the main hall where the initial fight had taken place. The ballroom was off to the left, and most of the place was open space, so when Richard led him straight on to some stairs leading down to the kitchens, he didn't feel too bothered about the lack of exploration. He was glad to have missed going back out into the courtyard where Cole... the courtyard. Seeing it from above had been more than enough.

The kitchens were gloomy but clean. Practically unused, even. “We don't have much cause to cook,” Richard explained on noticing him swipe a finger through some thin dust on a side table. The vampire did, however, zip around the room faster than Gavin's eyes could track, placing a cup of small beer on the table along with a plate of cheese and bread.

Gavin would have liked to be more dignified, but he was so hungry that he just about pounced on the food, stuffing it into his mouth with reckless abandon. Richard watched him, cocking his head.

“What?” Gavin snapped.

“You have atrocious eating habits.”

Gavin raised his middle finger on his free hand. “You can hardly talk,” he said once he had finished his mouthful, then miming two fangs protruding from his mouth with his forefingers. “Mister bitey.”

“I don't know what that means,” Richard gestured at his middle finger. “I'll assume it's something obscene.”

Gavin let out a single grunt of amusement. “Yeah.”

“You should slow down,” Richard added, moving over to lean on the counter.

Well Gavin was hardly going to do that – especially not after being warned to – and before he knew it, he had cleared the plate. “This feels like the end of the tour.” He stood and scrubbed a hand through the lengthening hair on his face. It had been a little while since he'd had a full beard, but that seemed to be where he was heading at this point, since he doubted he would be let within reach of any weapon, let alone a razor, any time soon.

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “I don't know.” He couldn't think of anywhere else Richard would want to show him.

Richard left the kitchen and Gavin followed wordlessly a few steps behind. “I do have one more thing, for now,” he said, but Gavin saw him stop stiffly as he reached the top of the staircase into the main hall.

He hurried to join him, only to see Connor frozen in the middle of the floor, clearly having stopped mid-step as he crossed the room, eyeing the two of them. “What is this?” the dark eyed vampire asked, something sharp in his gaze that was very definitely directed at Richard.

“I am showing our guest around,” Richard replied.

“Is that so?”

Connor seemed to be expecting a further explanation, but Richard gave none, instead heading to a corridor to their right with only a “Come along, Gavin.”

This time he obeyed without any bitterness, the sense of Connor watching them not dissipating even once they had moved out of his sight line. Gavin wasn't sure what it was, but the more he stayed with Richard, the more he found himself thinking that he was the stable one, subdued as he was, and that maybe Connor was scarier than his approachable, energetic outlook presented. This – this ideation with these demons – was a dangerous mindset to be in and he knew it, but the alternative was to have no idea of their individual dangers or weaknesses. At least, that was what Gavin was telling himself.

“Here,” Richard said as he swung a heavy looking door open. The aperture was almost as dark as the room they were in, so at first Gavin couldn't tell exactly what he was looking at, but then his eyes adjusted and he realised that it was a gently lightening sky. His eyes widened. What was this? His heart leapt traitorously. Surely Richard couldn't be... letting him go?

Perhaps the vampire saw this thought process ticking over his features, because he followed up, “The West Garden. We can't stay long, but I thought you might like to watch the sun come up before we go back inside.”

Of course; on this side of the castle, the sun wouldn't be strong enough to hurt the vampire for several hours. He was not being set free, only shown a kindness, as when livestock is allowed to run free in a field before being herded back in again. With a resigned sigh, he passed Richard's arm and stepped out.

The little garden was well cared for, made up of sculpted bushes and little, coloured blooms of pruned flowers. There were statues, lichened, half-size icons of men and women in flowing clothing, dotted around mournfully. There was the smell of early morning, a clean crispness which promised to be chased off by the heat of the sun. Gavin found his way through the little path to a circular clearing with two white stone benches on either side, and sat down.

He wasn't much of one to watch the sunrise, the sunset being far more accessible to him as he usually had to wait for them to happen before he got to his work, but as he sat, there was a soft purpling of the sky that he gratefully let sink into his bones. He could still see some stars, pinpricks of light giving the impression of floating just within reach.

He sat for a while in silence, not minding the chill of the air and instead just revelling in the feeling of a truly open space, even if there was undoubtedly a wall at some point behind the foliage and roses that populated the garden. Eventually there was a muffled sound of movement and Richard sat down on a bench across from him, looking up at some small clouds that were beginning to elongate in the sky, thrown in blue-grey with a bright pink tinge.

In real light, Richard's skin looked whiter than ever, with a washed out, silvery quality like one might get in an old mirror. He looked peaceful, irises almost translucent again, like the lowest layer of the sky on a hazy horizon, hair darker than the ebony wood of the old desk in Gavin's father's office when he was young. “I enjoy this, you know. I haven't had occasion to watch the sunrise for a while. I suppose I should thank you,” he spoke softly.

Gavin didn't reply to that.

The clouds morphed slowly, splitting into yet smaller ones and crawling closer to the horizon. When he judged that the time to return to the castle was nearing, Gavin gave into the curiosity rattling around his head and asked quietly, “Why are you keeping me around? It's not just for Connor to... torture. Why am I not..?”

Richard turned to face him, the question not requiring a conclusion, and Gavin's gaze stayed carefully trained on a leaf in front of him. “I find myself intrigued by you. Your contradictions. Connor has rather a gift of seeing something in people, even if he isn't sure what. On this occasion, I think he may just be right.”

“I thought you said you hated how contradictory I was.” He grit his teeth. “That I needed to choose one way of thinking of things.”

The vampire sighed. “Hate is a complicated emotion. I do wish you would...” He stopped.

Gavin frowned. The vampire looked almost reticent. “What?”

“I want you to be mine. My familiar, if that term is easier for you. I wish that you would allow me to care for you, and that you would treat me with less animosity, Gavin. But I expect nothing less.”

Less animosity? Gavin couldn't see how the fuck did Richard expect that when he was keeping him prisoner like this, feeding off him, torturing him practically. Anger reared and he rounded on Richard. “So you're fascinated with me?”

“Yes.”

“And that's why you haven't done it yet?” he snapped, clenching his fist.

“It?”

So the demon wanted him to say it? He could feel his lip curl; the vampire was answering this so coolly. He wanted Richard to be big and obvious and evil so he could just forget that he had actually kind of enjoyed the time they'd spent going around the castle together. “What do you think? Killed me, turned me, hypnotised me into it. Whatever.”

The thing only smirked, dropping his chin in a way that Gavin's mind supplied as privately amused _._

Gavin surged to his feet, shouting, bearing down on Richard like he was actually at all capable of threatening him. “You're never going to let me leave, are you? You show me around, keep me alive, tell me all this history and shit of yours because I'll never be able to tell anyone.”

Richard stood, seeming to tower over him in his proximity.

Gavin wouldn't back down, even as the vampire made to touch him.

He raised a hand, trailing the back of a finger down the side of Gavin's face and across his jaw to his chin. There was again something in his gaze Gavin couldn't place, a sadness in his voice. “I'm glad we've come to an understanding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr at [@elderbwrry](https://elderbwrry.tumblr.com/)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, again. Very late update, I got nervous lol.  
> Do check the tags again - specific warnings for this chapter are hypnotism leading to some non-consensual acts, but not all-out sex. Brief mention of some bondage. Read with discretion and all that.

Richard knew his brother could be temperamental, but he hadn't seriously thought that by showing interest in Gavin, he would have angered him. He had even been beginning to wonder if Connor had chosen Gavin specially in order to get him feeling this way, part of his ongoing mission to bring out some measure of the personality he'd lost under Elijah's tutelage. At least, he _had_ thought that until he had seen the look in Connor's eyes across the entrance hall.

Most of the time when with their own kind, Connor was calm, stable, and generally pleasant to be around unless something was annoying him. He threw himself into the study of languages as well as the science of animals and chemicals, always happy to update anyone who would listen on something interesting; but when prey was involved, he changed completely.

Richard himself favoured ruthless and efficient hunts. He preferred to choose targets that would give a decent fight but be done before daybreak. Connor, on the other hand, liked to play.

He could be exceedingly cruel; Gavin was far from the first person he had dragged home and kept locked up, teasing and breaking before pulling them back together again into some semblance of a living puppet. There had been more than he could count, men and women of just about all ages, several a century, the record being sixty in the fifteen hundreds, if Richard was remembering correctly.

The victims stayed for longer or for shorter amounts of time, ending up as familiars or dinner for Connor as the mood took him – sometimes they were even released if they were deemed to be mad enough, and Richard usually let him get on with it without joining in. He just wasn't interested often, but more recently he had started humouring his brother and playing along if he was bored. And... he'd realised Connor was right. There was just something _about_ Gavin, that fire, that pessimism, that sublime contradiction swirled together into something delicious.

Richard wanted to touch, he wanted to take and most of all he wanted to taste the hunter; for Gavin to allow him to do so willingly, however, would be all the more sweet.

He found himself thinking about Gavin at all hours since his first feed, which was not, as he suspected Gavin thought, right after the attack. No, the first time he'd bitten him was later after Connor had interrogated him and then taken off the hypnosis, in the room they'd given him.

Richard had been restless after that, mind drifting as he tried to read or draw or play music. That restlessness had caused him to push boundaries – both the human's and his own – questioning Gavin about his past and then actually getting angry when he'd responded exactly as expected. Richard had then flounced off to the roof and glared at things for most of the night until the allure of spending more time with Gavin had drawn him back inside for the tour.

Now, he was sure Connor was angry with him.

On one level, he understood why; he was moving in on his brother's prey, taking the kill, and of course Connor would lash out at that. He knew it didn't matter that Connor had only been planning on killing Gavin and throwing him away anyway, it was the principal of the thing which was so offensive.

Richard ran into his brother later in the main hall, where he stood twirling a scimitar. They had a collection of well-kept weapons – for largely sentimental purposes rather than out of any necessity – and when something was bothering Connor especially, he could be found like this, practising or fidgeting with them.

“Brother?” he said, slowing to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

Connor didn't look round.

“I take it apologies are in order.”

The twirling of the blade stopped, and Connor instead held it in a tightly clenched fist. “I don't need an apology from you, Rich.”

“Of course not, I-”

“You're a fangless waste of a demon.” Connor turned to face him. “Usually. If anything, it's good to see that you still feel something. What's the point of immortality if there isn't any life in it?” He scoffed, before inspecting the blade. “I suppose you wouldn't know.”

Now it was Richard's turn to stand in silence. Connor was saying some of the right things to seem forgiving, but his tone was terse and the insults stung. They both knew Richard wasn't the most emotive vampire ever; he had lost a lot of his humanity very fast when they were turned, and pulling himself back from the mindless killing machine he had been was still taking its toll several centuries later. He nodded in reply, and Connor swept off back to the weapons room.

Richard doubted that would be the last of it.

* * *

He was right; that wasn't the last of it.

Late in the day, he took some food up to Gavin's room. They hadn't been looking after him quite as well as they should have been and it was important for him to eat, regardless of how little blood they were actually taking – at least with Connor, feeding was never really the point of biting, so Gavin was unlikely to die of blood loss any time soon.

When he entered, Gavin was awake, sitting over the side of the bed, looking at his hands.

He was still wearing his simple clothes from before, and without even noticing he was doing it, Richard appreciated the way his compact frame filled out the fabric, and the way a few strands of his hair fell across his face, and the way his beard was growing out. Perhaps he should help him shave... or even let him grow it out thicker. He liked the idea of his pet hunter with a beard.

To catch the man's attention, he rapped on the door frame with his knuckles.

Gavin's head whipped round. “Oh, uh,” his eyes fixed on the plate Richard held. “Thanks.”

Richard entered and placed the plate on the vanity table, and Gavin moved to sit on the chair next to it, leaving Richard with the options of sitting on the bed or leaving. He stood, indecisive, until he was asked, “Are... you staying then?”

“I will, if you don't mind.” Richard said finally, taking the place on the bed which Gavin had vacated. “Did you sleep well?”

Gavin hummed, mouth full. “No one came and bit me in the middle of the night, so there's that.” His nose scrunched as he corrected, “Or the day. Whatever it is.”

Richard cocked his head as he analysed what he had just seen; the expression was more of a grin than anything else, but it fit Gavin's features perfectly. The scar on his nose crinkled when he did it, and it only absently struck Richard as out of place that he would be forming such an expression, so distracted by the man was he.

“Anything exciting planned for tonight, then?” Gavin interrupted his thoughts, pushing a piece of bread around the plate apathetically.

“I'm afraid not. I think it would be best if you rested.”

“That's a pity,” Gavin stood, “because I had plans.”

Before Richard knew it, Gavin was pushing himself up out of the chair, crossing over to him, and straddling his legs. It was so sudden, the human's warm body pressing against his, and so strangely welcome, he was still caught up in the several previous actions when his head was drawn up and into a kiss.

With a rush, his mind snapped back to the present. His heart jumped, and with a growl he tugged Gavin down to meet him more firmly, deepening what was quickly turning into a messy slide of lips. His hands were tight on Gavin's waist, and he savoured the feeling of the muscles that rippled under his shirt, pushing forward into his touch.

Richard could hardly believe it, that this was happening, that the object of his desire – the only object of his desire, in recent memory – was reciprocating, and, though something was bothering him about it, the thought couldn't materialise, what with the distraction of warm flesh and pumping blood and the welcome return of a curling arousal washing over it all.

Gavin started to grind in his lap, his hands dropping to fist in the clothes on Richard's chest, calloused fingers messing up fine fabric in a way which was simply fantastic, to Richard. Gavin seemed to pull away from the kiss far too quickly, breath heaving even as Richard chased his lips. The man's breath was warm and tingly across Richard's cheek as he instead allowed him to trace his jaw with kisses. The vampire leaned forward with an arm behind Gavin's back to support the way he was leaning out from the bed, but a second later Gavin was back, kissing him like his life depended on it.

_Maybe he thinks it does._

The thought had Richard frowning, even as Gavin continued to lick into his mouth. This was wonderful, novel, unexpected, and he didn't want to _stop_ , but he also didn't want Gavin to sleep with him just as a way to gain some sort of advantage. He had meant what he said about wanting Gavin willingly or not at all, but that also meant that Gavin knew how to manipulate him. He didn't want that to be all this was.

Torn between these thoughts and the sensations of _everything_ , Richard's control slipped for a moment and his fangs started to extend before he could stop them; he had been trying to keep them retracted to avoid hurting Gavin, fighting his possessive instincts as they pushed them out, but the thought that something was wrong caused his concentration to lapse.

“Ah!” Gavin gasped, pulling back and raising a finger to his lip; he'd been cut by Richard's fangs and a small line of blood quickly blossomed. Gavin watched the way Richard's eyes shot to it, grinning before he licked up and swallowed his own blood. “Want you,” he panted, leaning back in and rejoining their lips with an unashamed clack of teeth.

“Gavin,” Richard tried to warn, gently pushing back on Gavin even as the tang of his blood made him want _more, by hell, it tasted so sweet_. If he'd wanted to, he could have forced Gavin to move back, but if he was wrong, he didn't want to spook the man, and he didn't want to risk accidentally hurting him. He hadn't cared at first, but now, with the possibility of _this_ dangled before him...

Gavin's hands slid to Richard's shirt collar buttons, undoing the first three and skimming his fingers over the revealed skin before Richard was finally able to coax him backwards with firm hands over his wrists.

Of course, Gavin was showing all the signs of genuinely wanting to have sex with him; his pupils were blown, he had initiated and he was definitely hard, but it all felt too quick – too out of place with his usual combative vitriol. Strangely enough, that maddening fire the man had was... missing. Richard looked for signs that he was just doing it to manipulate him, to make him more likely to let him leave, but the more he looked, the more he couldn't believe that Gavin would ever choose that path. He would sooner fight and die. Then, as Richard peered into his eyes, he realised what was really wrong. There was something blank behind the hunter's gaze and something almost green to the colour of his usually greyish irises.

Connor must have hypnotised him.

“Gavin, wake up,” Richard ordered sharply, and instead of replying, Gavin smiled, a brush of confusion gracing his features as he manoeuvred Richard's grip on his wrists so that he could lean down to run his tongue over the part of Richard's chest and neck that he had exposed. Richard shuddered; it felt so divine that he was surprised it wasn't burning his flesh off in its wake. He was so reluctant to hold Gavin back any more, a weakness of the flesh that he let himself give in to if only to have Gavin touch him for a little longer, instead trying to reason, “You don't want to do this, Gavin, you've been hypnotised.”

“I do want to do this,” Gavin murmured, grinding down harder and getting started on Richard's other buttons. “I wish you would just shut up and fuck me already. Hard. I want to _feel_ it-”

And that – that was different. It was too close to what he really wanted. “Stop it, Gavin, don't make me stop you,” Richard insisted, but the hunter's fingers carried on unbuttoning.

Richard stood, pushing the man off him, ignoring Gavin's protests and attempts to get close to him again. At this point, if he let this go on, it would be too far. Keeping Gavin at arm's length, he backed out of the room.

“Richard,” Gavin whined, his arms just a little outstretched towards him, “please.”

Fury coursed through Richard's veins, so much so that his fists were shaking. Gavin was so near, so close to doing exactly what he _wanted_ , and he couldn't have it because it was just a lie, a performance which Connor had constructed to get back at him. “Connor!” he roared, and the floor shook with the intensity.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Gavin demanded as he backed away further.

To Richard's annoyance, the hunter insisted on following him on his warpath to find Connor, pawing at his shoulder. “Go back to your room,” he instructed when he felt himself becoming too tempted by the thrumming of blood beneath Gavin's skin which he could practically _hear_. He wanted to stop, shove Gavin up against the wall, tear off his clothes, do everything he begged for and more, he wanted to-

“No,” came the petulant reply, a fiery sting of anger behind it. There was just a flash of the real Gavin in there and it gave Richard a sharp glint of hope.

He deepened his voice and bared his fangs as he turned to threaten Gavin more seriously. “Now.”

Gavin actually stopped in his tracks, looking taken aback. Richard tried to ignore his hair, mussed up and gorgeous and begging to have fingers run through it, or the way his shirt hung just under his collar bone or the kissable shock on his lips or –

“Connor!” he shouted again.

He didn't want Gavin to be there when he confronted his brother in case something got violent, but the man trotted behind him as soon as he resumed his course, the hypnotism driving him to hang on Richard's every action. Worry gnawed a pit into his stomach; mere humans rarely survived clashes between vampires, and there had been some notable occasions when some of their lesser undead companions hadn't either.

Richard accelerated beyond what speed a human was able to match and, reaching Connor's door, threw it open, destroying what sounded like the locks. From the ceiling Connor's latest blond familiar was suspended from ropes, mostly naked and looking thoroughly hypnotised himself. Connor looked up innocently from the bond he was tightening. “Yes, brother?”

“Remove your spell from Gavin,” he commanded as authoritatively as he could. He himself must have looked a state; hair in disarray, lips pink on a face white with anger, shirt flapping half open.

“A spell?” Connor seemed rueful as he kept about his work. “Don't paint me as some mere witch, brother-”

“Do it!”

Connor's eyebrows raised as he took Richard's demeanour in. “Is this not what you wanted? For him to beg you? It's rude to refuse a gift.”

“This is not... This is not what I meant, Connor! Remove it. Now.” Richard snapped. He didn't care about Connor's reasons. He certainly knew this was not some misguided 'gift'. It was a punishment – an act of petty revenge, planned ever since Connor had listened to their conversation the previous night.

“No.” Connor turned from his task, narrowing his eyes. “You, learn to watch where you try to stick your cock and we won't have this problem. But this,” he pointed outside the door where Gavin had finally caught up, “is _precisely_ what you wanted. Here he is, your own willing slave.”

Richard let out an incredulous laugh that surprised even himself. “Is this is all because you wanted him first? Are we children again, fighting over such trivial things as _ownership_?”

“He wasn't yours!” Connor separated out the words, leaning forward and shaking his head mockingly.

“He wasn't yours either!” Richard shouted back, and the castle walls vibrated again in response. Closing his eyes, he took a calming breath. “You seduce people who aren't yours all the time. Married people. Members of the clergy.”

“Yes but always with a mind to _killing them_ ,” Connor threw his hands up in frustration. “Not showing them around the house like some rescued kitten. Not _actually_ falling in love.”

“I'm not-”

“I don't think you're able to know the difference.”

Richard's lip pulled back into a snarl. These arguments were infuriating. They had been having them more and more lately, in the centuries that Richard had been actively trying to regain some sense of autonomy and emotion, and every time Connor would laud his experience with both over him, silently implying, _'You're wrong because you have no idea how to feel these things.'_

Richard jumped when Gavin's hands slid up his back and over his shoulders, having finally caught up with him. He grabbed the hunter's elbows hard and held him away at arms length to stop him, easily keeping him in place despite his struggling. “I _told_ you never to come in here,” he growled lowly at him before turning back to his brother. “You make sure to have plenty of fun with them before you put them out of their misery, though, don't you?”

“There is always a purpose. Always.” Connor spat. “If you must know, I planned on sending your pet back dead, as a warning to those other hunter scum, thoroughly defiled.”

Richard ignored Gavin's breathy murmur of, “That last part sounds good.”

“You know that is not a good idea,” Richard tried to reason with his brother. “Don't antagonise them further.”

Connor looked murderous. “Leave then, if you're so worried! Leave and take your pet with you!”

“I show interest in someone _one time_!”

“It's not like you need me, no,” Connor ploughed on ahead. “Never the favourite, never the strong one or the fast one. Elijah always liked you best.”

“Connor, that is not true,” Richard said. Sometimes his brother could get in this mindset of feeling like a failure, feeling lesser than him because Elijah had shown some favouritism when they still flew under him. The fact was, Elijah's opinion was the only such one; everyone else preferred Connor to Richard, especially Markus, whose opinion was the one that mattered most in recent centuries. Elijah had only ever liked Richard's blood lust. His animosity. His orthodoxy. “I need you, and I don't want to have to leave you or this place because we can't live discreetly. Please. Remove the hypnotism.”

Connor glared at him for what felt like an age. “Fine.” He snapped his fingers, and in a moment Gavin went from being a rigid force pushing towards Richard to being a rigid force pulling away.

“Thank you,” Richard said stiffly. This time, he would not be foolish enough to think that the issue was completely put to bed.

“What... the fuck?” Gavin whispered. When Richard refocussed on him; his eyes were wide and he looked pale. He looked physically as if he was trying to retreat into himself, his shoulders up around his ears and his arms pulled in.

Concern lurched into Richard's chest. “Gavin, I-”

“No, no, let go of me,” Gavin hit out at his arms, fear and hatred springing to his eyes, and this time Richard let him go. As soon as he was free, Gavin bolted out of the room and down the corridor with barely a backward glance. The sound of footsteps only sped up the further away he got.

Richard sighed. Perhaps now he could make his brother see sense. “Connor,” he began, but the other vampire turned away from him sharply, yanking a rope and causing his blond familiar's arm to twist at an unnatural angle.

“Get out.”


End file.
